[tsa]

Man, those cars are beautiful, especially the Cabrio version!

In other news, last Wednesday I got my iPod/USB/external sound source attachment thingy in the car! Very nice: I now can play music from either my iPod, a USB stick or any other external source! The thing was pretty expensive but it was part of the deal I struck with the BMW dealer where I bought the car, so they pay for it.

[runningback]

hi,
got a '99 BMW 328 Vert and a Mini Cooper Park Lane ( mostly used by the GF )
as I dont like the later shaped BMWs I'd probably go with a Aston Martin DBS as the ultimate aspiration...

carpics:

[tsa]

Very recently I drove 140 kms with my 'normal' tires on roads that were covered in a thin layer of snow. They felt very slippery. I don't see myself driving such long distances in the near future, but I am pondering wether to get snow tires or not. What do you guys think? A friend of mine who lives in Washington told me that the concept of snow tires is completely unknown in the US. Is that true?

[runningback]

tyres with snow groove are useful if there is, as you say a layer of snow on the roads. In big citys and on main roads the snow gets cleared too fast or turns into mush during the day anyway, so I dont see the point in changing tyres for a couiple of weeks in the year, if you however live somewhere, where the snow sticks for months and covers the roads then I would certainly recommend winter tyres. They are as little use however on icy roads as normal tyres.

[Jelena]

These last three days we've had nine big accidents on the E4 that passes through our town. All of them included cars with lousy tyres. Some of them with really worn out winter tyres and some of them with summer tyres. A couple of the cars involved were foreign cars. It's obvious many people haven't got a clue to how important it is to use proper tyres during wintry conditions on the roads. And also to keep the speed down.

[tsa]

Just order new keys at Hyundai.
What does an Azera look like?

[tsa]

I saw Top Gear last Sunday, and I loved the way Jeremy thrashed the BMW X6.

For once he wasn't acting like a 14 year old boy and blowing it up or doing other ridiculous things with it. He just showed that cars like this are a waste of space, materials, energy and so on. He summed up exactly the reason why I hate SUVs with a passion: they just do nothing right. They're not practical, they're not economical, they're not as comfortable as normal cars, they are not built for offroad use, and they're not really built for onroad use either. I'm glad these dinosaurs are dying out fast in the current crisis.

[tsa]

So Saab was bought by Spyker today. I am really curious how this will turn out. I don't have my hopes up however. Victor Muller has never shown himself to be able to run a big car company, and he brought Spyker to the edge of bankrupty a few years ago. So let's see where Spyker and Saab stand 6 months from now.

[Jelena]

Originally Posted by tsa

So Saab was bought by Spyker today. I am really curious how this will turn out. I don't have my hopes up however. Victor Muller has never shown himself to be able to run a big car company, and he brought Spyker to the edge of bankrupty a few years ago. So let's see where Spyker and Saab stand 6 months from now.

We're curious as well. Saab has a lot of connections to my hometown. The head office was situated here for quite a long period during the 70s and we still have their global parts facility here.

[tsa]

So what do you think about the deal Jelena? I also commented about this on Slashdot:

Well, I don't trust this Victor Muller guy one but. His track record is abonimable. He first fired Maarten de Bruijn, who was the designer of the Spyker cars and the founder of the company because Maarten Maarten had a more conservative idea about money making than Victor had. Then Victor started a Formula 1 adventure that drove Spyker to the edge of bankrupty. And now he has borrowed 400 million euros to buy Saab, an amount of money he will never be able to pay back if you ask me. He has no experience at all in running a large car factory either. I will not be surprised if both Saab and Spyker are dead half a year from now. That would be devastating because both company make truly unique cars that touch the hearts of many people. For more information you can look up the Dutch and English entries in Wikipedia for Spyker Cars and references therein.

You see I'm very sceptical, to the point of 'out of the frying pan and into the fire.' Hopefully I'm wrong.

[Jelena]

Since all the information on Spyker I have is from this thread I have to say I'm quite dubious about the deal. At first I took it as good news that SAAB finally had a buyer, but I'd rather seen a not so obscure buyer. If GM couldn't handle it, how would a smaller company make it?

[tsa]

So yesterday Victor Muller got 25 million USD he needs for Saab, from the offshore company Heerema. A representative from Heerema will be nominated as a member of the Supervisory Board. Now Muller still needs 24 million dollars to pay GM before June 15th. And then he needs money to develop the new Saab model he wants to introduce in 2012. The 24 million are already scraped together by the Swedish Saab dealers, but how will he get the rest? I find this really exciting and interesting. What will Muller do now? How will he keep people interested until the next model arrives? Will he not forget Spyker now he's so busy with Saab? Will we see design characteristics from the Spyker cars in the new Saab, or vice versa? (I hope not; the two cars are way too different).

Sorry I couldn't find 'better' links. I read all of the above in my newspaper, but on the Internet the Saab-Spyker deal isn't such a big deal as it is in Sweden and the Netherlands, I guess.

[tsa]

I'm amazed at my car. I did 6 l/100 km on my last trip, with an average speed of 99 km/h! Not bad for a 1400 kg car that isn't slow. For you Americans: it's 39 mpg and an average speed of 61.5 mph.

[tsa]

Look, here is a very manly instruction on how to completely rip up your tires in under 10 minutes. They use a Ford Fiesta with 650(!) hp for it. What a brilliant machine and what a brilliant driver.

[Jelena]

Originally Posted by tsa

what a brilliant driver.

Mr J, Johan and I have watched this three times now. Amazing driver for sure.

[tsa]

My friend S who watches rally sports all the time says he's quite a bad rally driver. But what do you expect? He spends all his time practicing for this

[tsa]

Our parting prime minister got a ride in this as a parting gift. WOW! I didn't even know Mercedes made these. What a brilliant car.

It's almost as beautiful as the original from 1954. It's a feast to look at it!

[Erwin_Br]

It's quite stunning, but I don't like the headlights much...

[tsa]

I don't like the rear end. It looks a bit like that of a Porsche Boxster.

[tsa]

At our university they have a Tata Nano on display; the cheapest car you can buy.

It's developed for the Indian market, and my Indian colleagues were very enthousiastic about it. And rightly so: this could be the 2CV of the 21st century. It has everything a car needs: space, lots of windows, a nippy engine, and a steering wheel. Here is a nice review of it. Due to some safety issues it is not out in the West yet but I think if it ever will be it will be a smash hit. I want one .